Wool For Brains

It would appear that I have discovered the secrets of making finishing palatable. This is the totally finished Polar chullo, complete with the second ear flap, icord and tassels and with a total absence of ends. For me this is a major achievement and I promise to reveal my solution to tedious finishing after my thoughts on the hat. If I were knitting this again I’d start the ear flaps in the same way as a toe up sock and I’d knit them in the round with a simple pattern on the inside. This would mean that I could knot the ends together, tuck them inside the doubled flap and forget all about them. I suspect that I’d make them smaller too but I might change my views on that after I’ve worn it a while. Another time I’d take more care on the bears. The rows where I expected to have problems with the floats were the ones at the top of the bears but I took more care there and they are fine. The rows where the floats are puckering the work are on the legs of the bears. I should have had no problems at all there and I knew this so rattled through them without much thought. Maybe another time I’ll remember that lesson.

I will admit that I had anticipated that the icord would be dropping out of the icord mill. It’s just not suited to yarn this fine, the result looks as you would expect if you’d knitted sock yarn on a 5mm needle, loose floppy and unattractive so I had to knit it properly. The last time I made a chullo (predating the blog, the Cross Country chullo from Knitty) I followed the instructions and finished with applied icord. This time I knitted the icord and sewed it on because it made for more of a portable project (and also I’ve gone off applied icord recently). It did the trick and stopped the rolling on the ear flaps, there was still a bit of a roll on the front but that was persuaded to stop after a good steaming.

I’m sure you’re dying to know (humour me and pretend you are) – how did I make sewing in ends (a lot of ends) and knitting icord not be toe curlingly tedious?

Step one – arrange for any other knitting to be boring or even more tedious than sewing in ends. This is a sock that’s been in progress since September (boring) and the Christmas stocking has now reached the heel. This means working the pattern from the wrong side and beading from the wrong side and it is currently ticking all the boxes marked “tedious” and “no fun”. There’s a small element of excitement because the ball of beaded yarn is looking very small and there might be enough to finish the heel. Or not.

Step two – increase the need for the finished product by having two days with a forecast of snow. It’s forecast as “light snow” rather than “apocalyptic dump of epic proportions” for which I am heartily grateful. This was about the total of it this morning although the sky is turning that odd brown colour that means more is on the way. We have longer dog walks when it’s frosty because some of the more interesting paths are off limits until the mud freezes so when it’s cold we’re out for longer.

Step three – explore alternative finishing options. Would you have guessed from the second photo that this is what the backs of the flaps looked like? One has all the ends lovingly woven in one by one, the other has them braided along the edge on the wrong side. I didn’t much like doing the braiding either but it was certainly fast. It would have been easier if the item had been larger because I found that I needed something to tug against when I was making the braid. I don’t get much practise as I have short hair and a boy child. On the whole I think I prefer sewing the ends in but you have to try these things.

Step four – provide a distraction from the monotony. This should really be step one because it was the main reason for me finishing quickly but if I’d put the link in at step one you’d have wandered off and never returned. I’ve been listening to A History of The World in 100 Objects and it is an ideal accompaniment for tedious needlework. Each episode is under twenty minutes long, just long enough to sit down with a cup of tea for a nice relaxing session of sewing in ends. Hearing about King Den’s sandal label (carved on hippo ivory) got me through most of the icord at the top of the hat. If you don’t have a mound of boring knitting to trudge through you could download them to your phone or mp3 player and listen to them while walking the dog or sitting on the bus. You can listen to them wherever you are because although iplayer won’t let you watch BBC television from overseas you can still listen to BBC radio. This week is week four (the beginning of science and literature) but it’s not as if you’ve missed anything, you can still start at week one with the stone axe.

The next post will probably relate in some way to this little lot – the post man just called. The good side is that I don’t have to troop to the sorting office over and over again but I would have liked them to have been spaced out more because I don’t know what to open first. Anyone like to take a stab at guessing what’s in the big white thing or the small brown box? There’s no skill in guessing that the big black bag and the blue bag are fibre but the other two are more entertaining.